TOKYO (AP) - Japan will send nearly 25,000 soldiers backed by boats and aircraft into its disaster zone Monday on an intensive land-and-sea mission to recover the bodies of those killed by last month's earthquake and tsunami, the military said.

Agriculture officials also plan to send a team of veterinarians into the evacuation zone around a stricken nuclear plant to check on hundreds of thousands of abandoned cows, pigs and chickens, many of which are believed to have died of starvation and neglect. The government is considering euthanizing some of the dying animals, officials said.

About 14,300 people have been confirmed dead so far in the catastrophic March 11 tsunami and earthquake. Another 12,000 remain missing and are presumed killed. Some of their bodies were likely swept out to sea, while others were buried under the mass of rubble.

Cleanup crews have discovered some remains as they gingerly removed rotting debris to clear the area for rebuilding.

A man talks on his cell phone as he sits on a sofa among the rubble in the area devastated by March 11 earthquake and tsunami in the town of Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Saturday, April 23, 2011. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)

The dogs will pack up and live off the other critters, but will be ingesting radiation as well as being surrounded by it.How can you "rescue" animals that have lived in such a contaminated area for so long? How can you "decontaminate" them, externally and internally?

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